Observe, 1. Religion lengthens men's lives and crowns their hopes. What man is he that loves life? Let him fear God, and that will secure him from many things that would prejudice his life, and secure to him life enough in this world and eternal life in the other; the fear of the Lord will add days more than was expected, will add them endlessly, will prolong them to the days of eternity. What man is he that would see good days? Let him be religious, and then his days shall not only be many, but happy, very happy as well as very many, for the hope of the righteous shall be gladness; they shall have what they hope for, to their unspeakable satisfaction. It is something future and unseen that they place their happiness in (Rom 8:24, Rom 8:25), not what they have in hand, but what they have in hope, and their hope will shortly be swallowed up in fruition, and it will be their everlasting gladness. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. 2. Wickedness shortens men's lives, and frustrates their hopes: The years of the wicked, that are spent in the pleasures of sin and the drudgery of the world, shall be shortened. Cut down the trees that cumber the ground. And whatever comfort or happiness a wicked man promises himself, in this world or the other, he will be frustrated; for the expectation of the wicked shall perish; his hope shall be turned into endless despair.

The fear of the Lord prolongeth days,.... Not beyond the time fixed in the unalterable purposes and decrees of God, Job 14:5; but longer than some others, or than those that fear the Lord expect to live; or longer than, according to the course of nature, and the weakness of their constitutions, it could be thought they should live. Long life is promised to them that fear the Lord; godliness has the promise of this life and of that to come; the fear of the Lord is the means of preserving persons from those things which are pernicious to the health of men, and so of prolonging their days; as well as it has length of days, for ever and ever, even eternal life, annexed to it; see Psa 34:11;

but the years of the wicked shall be shortened; through diseases, which their sins bring upon them, which cut them off before they have lived out half their days; or by means of which, their sins, they come into the hand of the civil magistrate, and die before their time; or are taken off in their full strength by the immediate judgment of God, as were Ananias and Sapphira; and so they die in the midst of their days; and before the time, which, according to the course of nature, and the common period of life, in all human probability they might have arrived unto, Psa 55:23.

(Compare Pro 9:11; Psa 55:23).